The Movement of #MeToo

The Atlantic (Oct. 16, 2017): The Movement of #MeToo, by Sophie Gilbert: 

In response to the widespread allegations of Harvey Weinstein's sexual assaults, women and men beyond Hollywood have been coming forward via social media with hundreds of thousands of stories ranging from verbal assaults to physical violence. 

The "me too" movement began ten years ago when activist Tarana Burke encouraged survivors of sexual assault to foster solidarity and support for each other. This week, it's gone viral after actress Alyssa Milano took to twitter to mobilize women to stand and say "me too" if they had experienced sexual harassment or assault. The goal was "to give people a sense of 'the magnitude of the problem.'" Within the last 24 hours, Twitter has confirmed that the #MeToo hashtag has been circulated nearly half a million times--and this does not account for the stories shared on alternative social media sites, and, of course, those shared in private among family and friends.

Importantly, many are also recognizing that along with those speaking up and sharing, there are just as many who have very likely survived an assault and are not sharing their stories publicly. With a world of voices being raised and heard this week, the hope is that awareness will breed action and the culture of sexual violence against others will end. 

Unlike many kinds of social-media activism, it isn’t a call to action or the beginning of a campaign, culminating in a series of protests and speeches and events. It’s simply an attempt to get people to understand the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault in society. To get women, and men, to raise their hands.

Recent revelations about the alleged abuses of Weinstein and Bill Cosby and Jimmy Savile and R. Kelly have proven that truth has power. There’s a monumental amount of work to be done in confronting a climate of serial sexual predation—one in which women are belittled and undermined and abused and sometimes pushed out of their industries altogether. But uncovering the colossal scale of the problem is revolutionary in its own right.